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Space
Space refers to the entire multiverse except for planet Earth. Upper Atmosphere Space is traditionally defined as beginning 100km (62 mi; 330,000 ft) above the Earth's sea level, but some vestiges of atmosphere continue to extend for many hundreds of kilometers beyond that. The Simurgh rests in the upper atmosphereSixty-two miles above the surface of the Earth, the Simurgh changed the course of her flight. Following protocol for when Dragon was deployed on a mission, the system routed the message to one of Dragon’s satellite systems. The resulting message was scrambled by the dense signature of the Endbringer en route to Dragon. - Interlude 16.z or in Low Earth Orbit; flying lazily around the world beyond the reach of conventional attacks.The Simurgh was currently directly three hundred and fifteen kilometers above Spain, in the Earth’s thermosphere. It was the Simurgh that offered the most clues about what the Endbringers did in their periods of dormancy. The Endbringer winged a lazy orbit around Earth, beyond the limits of conventional weapons, and the highest resolution camera images showed she barely moved. Her eyes were wide open, but they did not move to track any cloud formations. She was, despite appearances, asleep. - Excerpt from Interlude 10.5 Many parahuman abilities stop at the edge of the atmosphere. In some cases, this is a Manton Limit to protect the parahuman (for example, a teleporter who teleported themself into hard vacuum would obviously place themself in danger.)Uphill/doomed project from the start. Shards are situated on Earth, reaching through realities for corona pollentiae. Powers don't really go into space, because, well, you've got the shard situated on the planet, and their reach is stretching, stretching up & out to the person with the shard. Do they exceed the shard's reach? Broken shards don't care so much, some powers can draw energy in other ways, but by and large, powers stop being responsive or start getting fucky at some point between the upper atmosphere and 400k km out. Many powers are manton limited so they don't actually get out into the vacuum. ... He likely had the means of creating the moon bubbles and tertiary systems and life support and keeping it running... but maintenance starts getting tricky. The first option is that the shard goes 'this is worth the effort' because Gramme is giving the shard fuel for something interesting, and all is well except for whatever it is that the shard was so keen about. The second option is that the moon base works fine, the first colony gets out there, and then somewhere along the line Gramme's well of inspiration and his eye for key details in his tinkerings just... stops. - Wildbow on Reddit Clairvoyant's power was one that was confined to the limits of Earth's atmosphere.Some were objectives I couldn’t identify, even with the clairvoyant. He only saw within the boundaries of Earth’s atmosphere. ... My ranged capes aimed for portals once again. This time, I put the exit portals against Earth’s atmosphere, aiming for the general direction of a satellite. It took thirty seconds of sustained fire before Shén Yù’s power stopped telling me it was a weak point. Other thinker powers in my range were giving me similar feedback. A cape with perfect eyesight was telling me it could even see the explosion. - Speck 30.4 Low Earth Orbit Low Earth Orbit (LEO) refers to the region from 160 kilometres (99 mi) - 2,000 kilometres (1,200 mi) above sea level. This is home to many satellites, including (in our world) the International Space station at 400km up.Wikipedia: Low Earth orbit Dragon maintains a network of satellites, presumably located in LEO or above.Interlude 10.5 Parahuman abilities generally begin to display issues at some point between the upper atmosphere and 400k km out; the main portion of the passenger supplying the ability remains on Earth, and the connection between the parahuman and their passenger suffers from the distance. The precise point where issues arise varies, however, with the passenger being more lenient if the parahuman is doing something interesting (i.e. generating conflict). In addition, "broken" passengers and powers that can absorb energy can overcome this limit. Higher Orbits The Moon Sphere sidestepped many typical power restrictions by manufacturing“Powers don’t work in space,” I told him. “We’re tethered to the agents and if you move far enough away the power doesn’t feed in. You wouldn’t get any tinker inspiration. When Sphere was trying to build the moon base, he had to build on Earth and send stuff up.” - Excerpt from Breaking 14.12 his construction drones'kagedtiger' This is all good information (thanks for that, I'm a Mannequin fan), but I guess my bigger question is this: how do Architect tinkers build these large-scale constructions by themselves? Sphere was just an easy example. In an effort to avoid scaring you away, I would add that I really only require the broad strokes. Wildbow Time, efficient use of resources. Sphere might have created something like a glass spinner, which would work around a plotted path and gradually form a structure made out of one of his altered, ultrahard, selective electricity conduction glass materials. Workstations that convert supplied sand into raw material, workstations that harvest sand, and have his 'workshop' sprawled out across a beach, which he consumes to produce his dome on the water's surface. They're not really drones or AIs, though. He manages and pilots and fine tunes a lot of it. But he can work from terminals while keeping an eye on the actual goings-on. - reddit comment by Wildbow. on Earth before rocketing them to the moon to construct a base out of Regolith. However, unless events there proved "interesting" for his agent, he would likely have found himself running out of inspiration and struggling with maintenance. In any event, Sphere went mad after his family were killed in a Simurgh attack, and never completed the project."Mannequin. Original name Alan Gramme. Tinker, originally went by the name Sphere. Specialty is in biomes, terraforming and ecosystems… or it was." Colin nodded slowly. He knew this, but it was reassuring to get a recap. "He became newsworthy when he took on a project to build self sustaining biospheres on the moon. He had ideas on solving world hunger, and building aquatic cities near cities plagued by overcrowding. And he was putting it all into effect. Until-" "The Simurgh," Colin finished. "His wife and children were killed in the attack, years of work ruined. Everything fell apart. He went mad. He cut himself off from the rest of the world. Literally sealed himself away." - Interlude 11d The half-built base remained on Earth Bet's Moon, abandoned."Nine-eleven didn't happen here. Endbringers did. They have one dollar coins in this America, not bills, and they phased pennies out. Um. There's an installation on the moon, half-built and abandoned. I don't know. Stuff is different." - Migration 17.6 Before her arrest, String Theory threatened to knock the Moon out of orbit using her "Firmament-driver" device. This was kept secret from the public, and she was successfully arrested."Upgrade of the F-driver." "The Firmament Driver," Defiant explained, over the earbuds. "At the time of her arrest, String Theory was threatening to use her Firmament Driver to knock our moon out of orbit." "And we didn't hear about this because-" "Morale," Defiant replied, as if that was explanation enough. - Extinction 27.4 Had her plan come close to fruition, Scion would have intervened.Part of Scion's motivation in doing so was to prevent a scenario where the shards couldn't find hosts (for much the same reason, he would have gone out of his way to stop, say, String Theory). - Spacebattles The Simurgh first appeared from behind the Moon, flying down to Lausanne.The Simurgh had approached from the far side of the moon and descended to hover just above the tallest building in Lausanne. - Scarab 25.4 Interplanetary & Interstellar Space Were an Endbringer thrown into Earth's Sun, the interdimensional portals that provide their bodies and powers might cause damage to the star.If one threw an Endbringer into the sun, though, given what the core is, both in immensity and that it's essentially a doorway into multiple realities, a lens to make the Endbringer projections manifest as reality, they might risk putting out the sun, or at least disturbing it to the point that Earth was gravely affected. - Wildbow on RedditI said 'might' - it's sort of up in the air, what happens if you... throw an adaptive denser-than-physics mass of interdimensional doorways into the sun. Even beyond that, individual powers pose questions... *Behemoth. Dynakinetic engine in the middle of a fuckton of energy? Enough said. *Leviathan, probably the least dangerous (though you're talking an excess of the spoiler(#spoil "interdimensional doorways")) to throw into the sun, but also hardest to catch and keep hold of. *Simurgh, mass scale telekinetic with a keen ability to process communications, working out means of producing signals via. butterfly effect and solar winds. Ambient static and signal noise on Earth starts sounding like a song... *Khonsu just makes his portals. What goes in doesn't necessarily go out. Sit in the middle of the sun and just let gravity bring energy into his fields. Release. *Tohu and Bohu? Bohu is a macro scale space warper with an eye for design and the ability to control more space as she remains stationary. Put her in the sun, let her gradually assert more control... - Wildbow on Reddit They would also probably exert their powers on a scale that could have repercussions back on Earth.Keep in mind, also, that the Endbringers (in jobbing mode) tend to wait until the enemy has an advantage before stepping it up a notch. This allows them to conserve their inner reserves of power (which are vast, but they're playing a constantly escalating game, and they're aiming to maintain it over 300 years.) Throw them into the sun and they'll have no reason to hold back at all - they'll just spend all their reserved power at once. Saving it is useless, since they're stuck in the middle of a superdense star. - Wildbow on Reddit The possibility of a host species evacuating large portions of their population from the planet is one the Entities considered long ago. Tinker shards that could grant mass-evacuation capabilities deliberately sabotage themselves to prevent a host from accomplishing such a thing, although individuals could potentially leave.By and large, the shards would sabotage attempts at going to space. Even Sphere's moon base was probably doomed from the start. ... Avatars like Scion are there in part to ensure things continue smoothly. If people decided to mass evacuate, he'd step in. ... It is a built-in limitation. Individuals could theoretically leave (Legend?), but mass transportation options would likely be sabotaged (like a Squealer spacehulk, or Sphere's power, for example). ... shards tend to be missing /current/ limitations; the ban on space travel is something that would be long-established, valid across multiple species. Other stuff varies for different plans of attack and the like. - Wildbow on Reddit Were large numbers of parahumans to leave the target planet, an avatar like Scion would step in to stop them.They don't want people leaving the planet they're working with. A very good reason to have an avatar like Scion around. Probably wouldn't draw his notice until people with shards started leaving in any greater number. Anyway, joking about star wars aside, the question of how the shards would deal with a species that already has spacefaring abilities is an interesting one. Possibilities include: *Going after one planet with a high influx of people and a steady growth rate. Operate as normal. *Divide into sub-shards, have each worm becomes two or three avatars. Probably a slower development rate, but they can still operate on multiple key planets, and work in concert, treating a system as a single planet, for all intents and purposes. *Broadcast a signal to all their entity buddies in that overarching section of space, so anything passing by is liable to reroute and home in. Easily ten+ entities working together. - Wildbow on Spacebattles There are a number of possibilities for how Entities would deal with a civilization that already had routine space travel. Intergalactic Space The Warrior Entity and Thinker Entity selected Earth as a target while they were still well outside the galaxy cluster in which the Milky Way resides.The entity is approaching the galaxy cluster in question now, and it sees its counterpart doing the same, if at a slightly slower pace. Both are trailed by a cloud of shards now, each cast off in such a way that it won’t reach its target location until a set time and date. - excerpt from Interlude 26 Navigation Category:Locations